‘And Bran?’

‘Bran?’ I grimaced. ‘He was an artist. But it always felt like Lonely was the … the trigger … the catalyst. His muse. His inspiration. It was like she was the source of all the anger in his work. Like he didn’t quite have it in himself to … It was her energy. He got it all from her.’

‘Did you like Kalinda?’ Mr Huff wondered.

‘Not at first,’ I admitted. ‘She was a very strange, very charismatic woman. Masculine. Rough. Incredibly strong, but also quite destructive. And there was this difficult dynamic between the two of them. A constant need to … to hurt one another, to lash out. A competition. It was quite hard to be around that. Especially for Orla. I think sometimes it threatened to overwhelm her …’

‘She didn’t like you?’

‘Who?’ I scowled.

‘Kalinda.’

‘No. Not to begin with. At first she was downright hostile. But I didn’t ever really rise to it, so eventually she grew bored and just tended to ignore me. Then one day we were out on the beach together, with Orla, and we bumped into Shimmy. There was some problem at home with Mum, who – as I said – was suffering from severe pneumonia … And she watched us together – me and Shimmy, just discussing arrangements etc. – for a few minutes, then afterwards she gazed up at me, very keenly – intently – and she said, “He isn’t your father, is he?” Just like that!’

‘She was very clever,’ Mr Huff muttered, thickly, his eyes ranging around the garden again.

‘I ended up telling her all about the circumstances of my birth. How my mother had stayed behind in Berlin during the war and had been …’

I strung my hands together, pained. Mr Huff didn’t make eye contact. He merely nodded, grimly. But very slowly.

‘Then she told me about the circumstances of her own birth, which were strangely similar. And I suppose a bond was formed. Between us. Because after that she was like a completely different character. Incredibly warm and … and tactile and loving. Almost to … well, almost to the opposite extreme.’

I winced.

‘It was Kalinda, then?’ Mr Huff murmured. ‘Kalinda who was in love with you, not Bran?’

‘I admired her enormously,’ I struggled to explain, ‘but not with the same … the same intensity. It wasn’t … I didn’t …’

‘Did Bran know? Did he object?’

Mr Huff’s hands were clinging, tightly, on to the edge of the bench.

I nodded. ‘Kalinda was an incorrigible flirt. She rarely formed attachments, though, and if she did … she found it difficult to give them up. She hated to feel rejected …’

‘Which of us doesn’t?’ Mr Huff shuddered.

‘She was often away. And when she was home she would drink. And she had all this surplus energy. A negative energy, I suppose. Bran was usually working, and her relationship with Orla was difficult at the best of times. Not long after she arrived here she’d made connections with a local farming family. She’d grown up on a sheep farm in the Rangelands. She’d worked for many years as a shepherdess. She had a natural touch with livestock. And at one point she began helping out with a crew of local shearers. They were a pretty disreputable bunch, but Lonely could hold her end up with the best of them …’